Relish! Menu Planning Review & Giveaway!

As you all know I love organizing and menu planning. Needless to say, when I got an email asking me to review the Relish! Meal Planning Website, I was really exited, and now I'm excited to be giving away a free membership in honor of my 500th post!

Meal planning can really help you to save money, and it will save you a lot of time. This website would be a great tool for everyone whether you're a beginner or an expert at menu planning, and it's very user friendly.

There are a lot of great features that I think you'll find very helpful. On your main screen, you'll find a list of meals to choose from, and each week there's a different list of recipes featured here. The page instructs you to choose 5 meals and one dessert from the menus. On this page there is also a list titled "Dime and Dash," which gives you a list of quick and inexpensive express meals to choose from.

And on this page you'll also see a section for favorites. Each week when you create a menu, you can choose to add certain meals to your favorites section, and once these are added to favorites, they will always appear on your menu planning screen. I really like this feature because it allows you to throw a couple of things that you know your family loves in with the new recipes that you select from the menu screen.

Another great feature on the main menu screen is the Recipe Legend. Beside each meal is a symbol which describes what kind of meal it is, and the legend tells you what each of the symbols mean. For example, KF means Kid Friendly. C equals Crockpot. LC means lower calorie. And M means Morning Prep.

And of course, the site is equipped with all the recipes you need. On the main menu planning screen, just click on a meal, and you'll be directed to a printer friendly page with all the recipes that you need for a particular meal. And to make this feature even better and more useful to you, there is a pull down menu where you can select how many people the meal will be for, and the recipe cards that you view will be adjusted to fit the number of people in your family. Super!


Another favorite feature of mine is the shopping list component. Once you've selected the meals you want for your menu, click "create custom menu" and the site directs you to a shopping list. In the first column is a list of "Items You Need but May Already Have." (Things like milk, butter, and spices.) And then all your other shopping list items are organized into food groups, and the shopping list even includes the quanity of ingredients you need. (So if you've selected 2 different meals that include chicken breasts, and you have 4 family members, your shopping list will have 8 chicken breasts on it.) The shopping list even goes as far as to tell you how many eggs you need, or what size package of chili powder you'll need.

Now let's say you go on the main menu screen, and none of the featured recipes sound good to you. No problem! Just visit the Menu Archive, and you'll find a ton of other options, or pull up your Past Menus. But let's say, you already have a list of favorite recipes on rotation in your house, and you want to add these recipes in with one or two of the Relish recipes each week. No problem again! If you have a favorite recipe, just submit it to Relish, and they will convert it to a meal and put it up with entrees in your favorites list.

Another part of this website that I found very interesting was the "This & That Section." This section includes a list of special menus. They feature menus for special occasions like Dinner Parties & BBQs, Superbowl, Lunches, Gourmet Potluck, Easter Brunch, Christmas, and Mother's Day. And the section also includes a list of fun menus for kids of all ages. The list included several movie themed menus including Ratatoille, Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, and even Twilight. Sounds fun, huh? And I think this section could make your party planning a breeze.

I'm excited to be giving away a One Year Membership to Relish! to one Simply Sweet Home reader. This is a $58.80 value!

Giveaway is Now Closed.

Additional Entries:

-Bonus Entry: Tell me something you'd like to see more of on this blog in 2010 (recipes, organizing, crafts, party planning, deals, etc.)

-One entry for following me publicly on blogger.

-One entry for joining my feedblitz mailing list, or 2 entries if you are already a member prior to this giveaway.

-One entry for subscribing in a reader.

-One entry for following or subscribing to my new business blog.

-One entry for following me on twitter and/or becoming a fan on facebook.

-One entry for tweeting about this giveaway.

-Two entries for writing about this giveaway on your blog and linking back to Simply Sweet Home.

(Just leave comments for each additional entry, and please leave a user name/link or something so that I can verify. Thanks!)

Other Rules:

-Don't forget, if you don't have a blog or a profile with a visible email address, please include your email address in your comment so that I can contact you if you win. (Can't stress this enough!)

-Jerri

Click here to see the entire Giveaway Blog Hop List....